Tiny Dogs Abandoned On Roadside Were Living Together Inside Old Tire

On a hot Saturday afternoon, three tiny dogs huddled together inside an old tire, attempting to escape the bright sun.

The deflated tire sat on a shoulder of an empty dead-end road in Muscoy, California, just underneath a freeway overpass. In such a desolate location, chances that the abandoned dogs would survive the extreme heat were slim — but their luck was about to change.

A driver who took a wrong turn spotted a matted white terrier perched atop the pile of garbage. Sensing the animal needed help, the man called Faith Easdale, a local dog rescuer with Dream Fetchers: Project Rescue. Easdale receives this type of call far too frequently.

“We do this all the time,” Easdale told The Dodo. “We see dogs dumped in underpasses, fields, canyons, freeways, you name it — and that area is one of the worst.”

“Hardly anyone would go there or even see these dogs, and even if they had seen them, they would have kept on going,” Easdale added. “They just don’t care. It’s an everyday occurrence.”

Easdale contacted Cassandra Aldridge, a friend in the area, and asked her to visit the site where the man reported seeing the abandoned dog. When Aldridge arrived on the scene, she spotted the dog — and when she peeked inside the tire, two more little faces looked up warily.

They were too lethargic and dehydrated to move from their spot in the pile of sunbaked rubber, so Aldridge decided that the quickest and easiest way to get the dogs out of there was to pick up the tire and put it in the back seat of her car.

There was no way of knowing how long the dogs had been surviving on their own, but they were clearly relieved to be in the air-conditioning of her car.

Easdale arrived on the scene soon after, and when they saw her the dogs scattered in the back seat. She took her time coaxing the scared dogs out of hiding and wrapped them each in a soft blanket, giving them water, which they eagerly lapped up.

“I stroked their heads and let them know that they were OK, and then I put [them] one by one in a crate,” Easdale said. “They just were so lethargic that they didn’t even want to run. But they were all so happy to be in that crate huddled together.”

Finally safe, Easdale watched as a little black poodle, who appeared to have been recently pregnant, wrapped her paws around the white dog, and “held on to her for dear life.”

The dogs were rushed to a nearby veterinary hospital, where they were examined and given fluids. When names were required for their veterinary forms, the rescuers named them after different brands of tires — Michelin, Pirelli and Kumho.

Infested with fleas and ticks, the three dogs were missing patches of fur from scratching at their itchy skin. But with dental cleanings, spaying and neutering and professional grooming on the horizon, things are beginning to get a little brighter for the trio.

“Pirelli and Kumho were both lactating, meaning they were still producing milk for puppies that were hopefully old enough to be weaned; Michelin was shut down and protective and is opening up as the days go by,” Hedy Alison, office manager of Camino Pet Hospital, wrote in a hospital report. “The girls are so loving and seem to feel like royalty with their new ’dos. Michelin is still too proud to wiggle his tail but we can see the light coming back to his eyes.”